The Gospel of John is the fourth book of the New Testament. The passage that we will be dealing with from the book of John is chapter one verses one through five. In the outline from the background study it is under the section, "The eternal Word incarnate." This passage is the prologue, which John uses in order to establish the foundation that he will use to build his presentation of the life of Christ, as it was not portrayed in the synoptic Gospels.
             Verses 1-5 will be best understood in light of the entire context of the book. We should remember that the Gospel of John was written to supplement the other Gospels. Although John does not start out his Gospel with the birth of Christ the man, he starts out with Christ in eternity. In this prologue, he mostly deals with the deity of Christ, and His involvement in the creation of the world; however, he does deal somewhat with the authority and power given to Christ empowering him to overcome the "darkness."
             In this paper, we will seek to understand the theological meaning that John presents in verses 1-5. We will seek to relate this meaning to the context in which this passage is found. For example, since it was commonly believed at the time of John's writing of his Gospel that the "Word" had not yet come to the Jews, how did John deal with this? Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to understand the significance of the writing of John's Gospel, and the scripture upon which the theology of the Trinity is established. We will do this through a study of the words that John used in this particular message, through a study of the theological meaning of the message, and through interpreting the relevance of the message to the time and circumstances of its writing.
             In the beginning. Starting off like Genesis 1:1, John here alludes to the Old Testament and the Jewish idea of God creating the earth through his preexisting wisdom (Clarke). This s...